Pink Unicorns
I21 August
Today is Sunday, the 21st. It won’t be long before we’re in Kuwait. To tell you the truth, I’m ready to get it over with.
22 august
This is too much like a diary. I feel like a little girl and I like the color pink and unicorns… Right now, I like sleep. I sleep, but it ain’t the best sleep. We are doing an exercise of some kind. There are imaginary players and events, we handle them. I work a 12 hour shift at night. Then I come home, crash and wake up, and go shower not so much to be clean but to just feel good.
I packed all my music CDs into a foot locker that is going over on a boat. My room mate is a Metal fan, so he plays some music from his computer sometimes. All I have is a mix on my phone of Drive By Truckers, Old 97s, Son Volt and a Drivin N Cryin tune…Scarred But Smarter. I keep listening to the same songs over and over. And, sad thing that it is, I’m heading to a life of Groundhog Day.
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) are little cities withen them selves. Everyday you get up and walk to work, same way, you can take the long way, but it’s just more of the same stuff. You eat at the same place, unless you eat at one of the fast food vendors serving out of a carnival trailer. You wear the same thing every day. You get used to that, but it’s just the primer. Everyday, you deal with the same stuff. Same people. And, being the middle east, the weather pretty much stays the same through summer and fall. An ugly kind of beautiful.
Honestly, Arifjan, the Capital of FOBs in all of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan is rightly plush from everything I gather. It’s close to the ocean in Kuwait, people get off work and wear civilian clothes. In Iraq, you might have a t-shirt and pair of shorts used for relaxing in your hooch. Civvies are not authorized. But at Arifjan, you go to the PX in civvies.
Taji was a mud hole. Everyone that was in Taji jokes about the dump it was. It was Saddams Maintance hub and some interpreters told me they were trained there during their stint in the Army. The Iraqi maintenance system was cannibalization out of junk yards, so, there were quite a few junk yards and armored vehicles were scattered everywhere. There were craters, some 20, 25 foot deep. I found all kinds of old weapons rusting under a layer of dust. A Martini Rifle once. The barrel was bent as it had been burned. Gutted buildings. Saddams face painted on walls and litter scattered everywhere. A Security Contractor asked me if I knew what the Iraqi flag was. His answer? A black garbage bag caught in Constantia wire. He was right. It was a place that was one of the dirtiest things I ever have saw. Just to think, it had been worse before US occupation. But, it was interesting. I’ve been in T-55s, T-62s, BRDMs, BMPs. I’ve seen air craft missiles dug up from the ground.
I say occupation because we occupied the place, We called it “coalition”, because there were other nations there as well. Estonians, Macedonians, and one or two others on the place. There was the Coalition and Iraqi side which was like the wild west.
24th August
After I got transferred I almost fell out of contact with my old Company. I checked up on them and turns out one of the guys that had been in the Company got hit by an IED in Iraq. The story is by trying to get another guy out of the vehicle he got third degree burns on his hands and arms. Another boy got killed. This happened last month and no one got word to me. They thought I had already headed across the water. He’ at Sam Houston. Now he has the medal no one wants but everyone that has one is the proudest of…A Purple Heart.
Pink Unicorns Out
The Appalachianist
Today is Sunday, the 21st. It won’t be long before we’re in Kuwait. To tell you the truth, I’m ready to get it over with.
22 august
This is too much like a diary. I feel like a little girl and I like the color pink and unicorns… Right now, I like sleep. I sleep, but it ain’t the best sleep. We are doing an exercise of some kind. There are imaginary players and events, we handle them. I work a 12 hour shift at night. Then I come home, crash and wake up, and go shower not so much to be clean but to just feel good.
I packed all my music CDs into a foot locker that is going over on a boat. My room mate is a Metal fan, so he plays some music from his computer sometimes. All I have is a mix on my phone of Drive By Truckers, Old 97s, Son Volt and a Drivin N Cryin tune…Scarred But Smarter. I keep listening to the same songs over and over. And, sad thing that it is, I’m heading to a life of Groundhog Day.
Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) are little cities withen them selves. Everyday you get up and walk to work, same way, you can take the long way, but it’s just more of the same stuff. You eat at the same place, unless you eat at one of the fast food vendors serving out of a carnival trailer. You wear the same thing every day. You get used to that, but it’s just the primer. Everyday, you deal with the same stuff. Same people. And, being the middle east, the weather pretty much stays the same through summer and fall. An ugly kind of beautiful.
Honestly, Arifjan, the Capital of FOBs in all of Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan is rightly plush from everything I gather. It’s close to the ocean in Kuwait, people get off work and wear civilian clothes. In Iraq, you might have a t-shirt and pair of shorts used for relaxing in your hooch. Civvies are not authorized. But at Arifjan, you go to the PX in civvies.
Taji was a mud hole. Everyone that was in Taji jokes about the dump it was. It was Saddams Maintance hub and some interpreters told me they were trained there during their stint in the Army. The Iraqi maintenance system was cannibalization out of junk yards, so, there were quite a few junk yards and armored vehicles were scattered everywhere. There were craters, some 20, 25 foot deep. I found all kinds of old weapons rusting under a layer of dust. A Martini Rifle once. The barrel was bent as it had been burned. Gutted buildings. Saddams face painted on walls and litter scattered everywhere. A Security Contractor asked me if I knew what the Iraqi flag was. His answer? A black garbage bag caught in Constantia wire. He was right. It was a place that was one of the dirtiest things I ever have saw. Just to think, it had been worse before US occupation. But, it was interesting. I’ve been in T-55s, T-62s, BRDMs, BMPs. I’ve seen air craft missiles dug up from the ground.
I say occupation because we occupied the place, We called it “coalition”, because there were other nations there as well. Estonians, Macedonians, and one or two others on the place. There was the Coalition and Iraqi side which was like the wild west.
24th August
After I got transferred I almost fell out of contact with my old Company. I checked up on them and turns out one of the guys that had been in the Company got hit by an IED in Iraq. The story is by trying to get another guy out of the vehicle he got third degree burns on his hands and arms. Another boy got killed. This happened last month and no one got word to me. They thought I had already headed across the water. He’ at Sam Houston. Now he has the medal no one wants but everyone that has one is the proudest of…A Purple Heart.
Pink Unicorns Out
The Appalachianist
posted by Hill Billy Rave | Thursday, August 25, 2011
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